Acne is one of the most common skin conditions seen by dermatologists. As with many other cutaneous diseases, due to its visibility, acne often produces a large psychosocial impact on patients who suffer from the disease. Such psychosocial burdens are exacerbated by the variation in acne presentation that can lead to the usage of multiple different treatments before visible improvements are appreciated. Although many scales have been established to determine severity from the clinician standpoint, patient-oriented scales are lacking. Clinicians use these severity tools to guide management and judge patient improvement from visit to visit. Creation of such a severity scale from a patient's perspective would allow patients to not only assess their perception of their acne independent of a physician but could also be used to determine patient satisfaction with treatment that would then help to more effectively guide management. Therefore the goal of this study is to create and validate a patient-centered acne severity scale using a visual analogue scale format.
Keywords: acne; quality of life.
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